


Wonderland

by canistakahari



Series: space pirate AU [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:29:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canistakahari/pseuds/canistakahari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim and Spock need a Federation doctor, so they kidnap a man called Leonard McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> No matter what AU they’re inhabiting, Jim and Bones always come together.

*******

 

He’s stumbling in abject bewilderment through the thick, acrid smoke, ears ringing relentlessly from the explosion like a thousand angry bees, troubled with vague, jumbled thoughts about finding the inevitable casualties and doing, you know, important doctorly things, when someone grabs him roughly by the arm.   
  
Leonard McCoy opens his mouth to protest, annoyed retort already on his lips, primed and ready to start bitching, but he chokes immediately on the smoke and explodes into violent, hacking coughs. By the time he’s settled, his eyes are streaming with tears, dissolving tracks through the dust on his face, and, oh  _shit_ , there’s another hand gripping a fistful of his uniform and what feels like a phaser or other disturbingly gun-like object pushing up between his ribs.   
  
McCoy is emphatically not a hysterical man and he’s not keen on screaming this early in his shift, so he doesn’t turn his head towards the presence looming behind him. He just keeps on walking with the man, the barrel of the phaser burning an imaginary hole in his shirt.   
  
This is  _exactly_  the sort of thing he had been hoping would happen to spice things up today. First on his to-do list: get manhandled and poked at by a man with a gun.  
  
Because McCoy hates excitement, and because his head is spinning, it’s taking him too long to piece together what’s happening here. His only sure reaction is to scowl, because who the  _fuck_  is this person, walking him through the corridors of his own hospital like some prisoner of war? What the hell is going on here?   
  
 _Well, let’s review_ , thinks McCoy dizzily, to keep himself distracted from the pressure of the gun at his side. Intruder with a weapon. Currently holding him hostage. Bomb gone off somewhere in the building. Patients to see to. Conclusion: multiple threats detected, analyzed, and found totally panic-worthy. Commence appropriate reactionary response procedure.  
  
Goddamn it, he hasn’t has enough coffee yet tonight for this kind of lunacy.  
  
“You’re a Fed doctor, right?” the man marching him through the corridor asks cheerfully, speaking to him for the first time. His voice is youthful, mocking, and dripping with exactly the kind of cocksure attitude that McCoy finds exhaustively annoying in young people.   
  
Self-preservation instincts apparently lacking, McCoy’s brain merrily short-circuits and he resorts to the usual abrasive sarcasm he employs in every-day interactions, irritably snapping out, “No, dipshit, I just wear the uniform because blue’s my favorite colour.”  
  
His captor— _captor_ , oh boy, this is a real fucking treat, McCoy has always wanted to be held hostage before—barks a startled laugh, giggling appreciatively before nudging him pointedly with the phaser like he’s dotting a period at the end of a sentence, his weapon merely a bit of punctuation. “See, I’ve got this weird rash in a very private place. What would you recommend, doc? Just as a sort of, ah, general fix-it?”  
  
“Could be an infection,” grunts McCoy, and wow, his desire to picture anyone’s genitals right now is probably at an all time record low. “Try a hydrochloric acid bath on the affected area. Maybe a 30% solution, just to be safe.”  
  
“Hot damn, you must be a crappy doctor,” replies the man, his voice right at McCoy’s ear, low and amused. McCoy tries his absolute level best to keep himself from visibly shuddering. “I’m not really super-excited by the prospect of  _castration_ , but you make it sound real tingly.”  
  
McCoy doesn’t have the wits to reply; he’s being walked to the main exam room, and just before they reach the door, another man meets them, his phaser joining the first at McCoy’s ribs. McCoy catches a glimpse of dark, neatly cropped hair, and pointed ears.  _Vulcan_.   
  
Together, the men herd McCoy carefully into the room, keeping him ahead of their phase pistols.   
  
Through the smoke, McCoy spots a group of younger doctors and nurses already clustered near the opposite doors, currently guarded by two more people, a tall, striking black woman and a curly-haired boy that can’t be a day older than sixteen. McCoy seems to be the last of the night crew that they’ve rounded up.  
  
McCoy turns to face his captors, and comes nose to nose with laughing blue eyes and sandy blond hair; the man’s generous mouth quirks into a grin. He doesn’t take his eyes off McCoy as he waves his phaser at the assembled company and asks, “Now that we’ve got all the blue shirts in one room, can someone tell me who the senior medical officer on duty is?”  
  
There’s a pregnant, terrified pause.   
  
Some manage not to, but at least half the room’s occupants unintentionally glance at McCoy, their faintly reproachful stares directed at his back. Without any idea he’s already been identified, his eyes fixed on the blondie with the annoying grin, McCoy doesn’t hesitate as he growls, “Yeah, that would be me, hotshot. Now what the hell is going on? That blast of yours could’ve injured already sick patients, you idiots. You can do whatever you like with me, but this is a  _teaching hospital_ , and most of the staff here are students and residents. Leave them out of this.”  
  
“That’s mighty heroic of you,” the man replies, with a careless shrug. “But that wasn’t a bomb, it was a flash-bang —pretty much some harmless little fireworks with a whole lotta smoke in ‘em. A distraction. Now, I’m afraid you’re coming with us, doc.”  
  
McCoy can’t help the derisive snort that bursts out of him. “Like hell! I ain’t going any—”  
  
It’s the Vulcan that moves, suddenly, pouncing like a cat and curling his fingers around McCoy’s arm, pulling him forward. McCoy attempts to step backwards and finds it like trying to move a brick wall; he jerks helplessly against the immovable force, and then the Vulcan’s other hand is closing around the juncture between his neck and shoulder, squeezing insistently. There’s the spark of disrupted nerves, McCoy emits a startled, cut-off yelp, and then there’s darkness.   


oOo

  
  
Everyone in the room watches in horror as McCoy slumps, his expression slack, and the blond leans forward to help catch his prone body, slinging the unconscious man over the Vulcan’s shoulder, his arms dangling loosely.   
  
The blond grins cheerfully and gives the assembled company an exaggerated wave. “Thanks for coming out today, kids! Don’t worry about the doctor—” he reaches out and pats McCoy on the rear, “—we’ll take good care of him. Unless we get any hint of a Federation rescue effort, at which point he’ll be taking a pretty unwanted spacewalk in his Starfleet insignia underoos.”  
  
He ducks out the doors the trio had entered through, followed by the Vulcan, McCoy draped over his shoulder like a bag of laundry. The doors swish shut behind them with a happy sigh. The woman and the boy disappear as well, and the medical staff is left standing, staring silently.   
  
Eventually, a young resident clears her throat, meets another doctor’s eyes, and mutters, miserably, “Well, shit.”  


oOo

  
  
McCoy wakes, briefly, to the juddering, nausea-inducing shake of a rather elderly shuttle valiantly attempting to leave Earth’s atmosphere.   
  
When he opens his eyes, he’s met with the viewscreen directly ahead in his line of sight, yawning wide and blue-black and  _so incredibly fucking huge_. He swallows a mouthful of bile, gags on the acid burn, and moans.   
  
A body next to his shifts, and an irritatingly familiar voice asks, “Finally awake? Hey, Spock, next time not so hard, he’s been out for nearly an hour.”  
  
A second voice, floating over from the pilot’s seat, calmly murmurs, “It was intentional, captain. I made the assumption that an unconscious body would be much simpler to move; if the doctor had awoken before reaching the shuttle, he might have foolishly attempted an escape.”  
  
“Ugh,” groans McCoy, shifting in his seat and realizing, distantly, that his hands are cuffed together. He leans over the arm rest, to glare indistinctly at the blond pirate in the seat adjacent to his—the apparent captain of whatever the hell fresh-faced kids like him are captains of these days. “I may throw up on you,” he mumbles thickly, his eyes unfocused.   
  
The amused expression falls off the captain’s face hilariously fast. “What? What’s the matter with you? Motion sickness or something?”  
  
“Or something,” replies McCoy, pointedly not looking out the viewscreen as the shuttle rocks violently, catapulting them out of orbit and into the deep, inky darkness of space. His stomach lurches unsteadily, and he swallows again, frantically, as his mouth fills insistently with saliva.   
  
McCoy makes the rapid-fire decision that unconsciousness would probably be appreciated by all parties currently occupying the shuttle; judging by the grey spots in his vision, the shuttle doesn’t have particularly effective inertial dampeners, and the force of Earth’s gravity is still dragging at them considerably.   
  
“Excuse me,” he says weakly to the captain, as he levers himself to his feet as quickly as possible. The captain’s yell is a fuzzy, fading sound as all the blood rushes from McCoy’s head on an enthusiastic journey down to his feet. He’s doesn’t feel it when he hits the deck.   


oOo

  
  
When he wakes again, in what McCoy hopes will not be a continuing trend, this time he’s lying on something like a padded bench or an ancient biobed. There’s still a knot of anxiety clenched hard in his belly, signaling that his body is well aware he’s in space, thank you, even while his mind is out of the picture, floating obliviously through unconsciousness.   
  
McCoy can’t shake the spatial disorientation, even as he comes to, and his head is aching, his mouth cottony dry like he’s spent the day licking felt.   
  
“You know, I’m starting to think maybe I grabbed the wrong doctor,” says a voice to his right, and McCoy’s eyes peel open reluctantly, focusing with effort on the yellow and blue and pink blur sitting in a chair beside him.   
  
“Good,” mutters McCoy petulantly, and he moves to sit up, only he’s stopped by the  _motherfucking restraints on his arms_ , binding him securely to the bed. “What the fuck?” he demands, tugging, panic beginning to weave clumsily through his veins for the second time in way too short a while.   
  
And he hadn’t really had the proper time to panic, before, if he thinks about it. Now he’s got plenty of fucking time to let the fear build, manifesting accusingly in his aching head. His ears are buzzing again.  
  
The man ignores him, sitting forward, his unnerving gaze fixed on McCoy. “You didn’t get sick on me, but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting you to knock yourself right the fuck out because you didn’t want to hurl. I looked up your file, though, once we got back on board. That was a little more reassuring; you’ve definitely got skills, so I think you’ll serve us fine, as long as we don’t stick you on another shuttle any time soon.”  
  
“Why in blazes am I tied down, boy?” McCoy grinds out, not really concerned with the kid’s opinions on his medical career and wrenching pointedly on the wrist straps. He feels like ‘what the fuck’ is a sentiment that doesn’t really require much clarification, but maybe the kid is brain damaged, or something. Why else would you kidnap a Federation doctor?  
  
“Kirk,” replies the captain, helpfully. “It’s Jim Kirk, not ‘boy’. I’m the captain of the  _Enterprise_.”  
  
Oh, shit.  _Shit_.  
  
The  _Enterprise_.   
  
It makes a little more sense, now, to McCoy. He’s only just been kidnapped by motherfucking  _space pirates_ , and, no, not just  _any_  pirates. That would be too mundane. He’s been kidnapped by the most infamous captain of all the little gangs that fly around in uncharted space, sticking their tongues out at the Federation, because that’s just how McCoy rolls, apparently. He’s surprised he didn’t realize it, before. He’s seen the laughing face pasted all over news bulletins and broadcasts at Starfleet Command for the last few years.   
  
“Okay, Captain,” he echoes, exasperation dripping off every clearly enunciated syllable. He shakes his wrists again, trying not to let the bright burn of fear show on his face.   
  
“You were having some sort of panic attack, when we brought you aboard,” Kirk shrugs, leaning back in his chair. “In your sleep. Foaming and spitting and flailing around so hard you nearly punched me in the eye. Spock said a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about flight phobia, and stress. We tied you down so you wouldn’t hurt yourself. It was pretty epic, I think you bit Spock.”  
  
Despite the fact that he’s been kidnapped, and that in itself is humiliating enough, this is just icing on the world’s shittiest birthday cake. His ears are burning from embarrassment. “Well, I’m fine now,” he mutters. “So you can damn well let me up and explain to me why the fuck you’ve brought me all the way out into space, when I would’ve found it preferable never to leave Georgia, let alone end up in Starfleet.”  
  
“I’m now going to remind you I’m armed,” Kirk says cheerfully, reaching out to unlock the padded medical restraints. “And that attempts to run will only get you air-locked faster than you can say ‘I love grits’.”  
  
McCoy scowls. He sits up slowly, after Kirk has untied him, and rubs his wrists, chafed raw by his own keen attempts to have a nervous breakdown without even being conscious. “What do you need a Federation doctor for?” he asks cautiously.   
  
Kirk smiles eagerly. “What does anyone need a doctor for, Leonard? To fix broken people.”  


oOo

  
  
Kirk  _actually_  has a rash on his dick.   
  
McCoy narrowly avoids kicking the man right in the junk and breaking out the HCL. Before he can have an aneurysm, though, Spock explains that the captain’s lascivious diseases aren’t why he’s been brought aboard, and then magnificently evades any and all attempts McCoy makes to get him to elaborate on the true reasons for his kidnap. In the meantime, the skeleton crew on board has been sent to him with orders to get their inoculations and medical files up to date, since they finally have access to someone who knows what the hell he’s doing.   
  
The sickbay is small, but well-stocked. McCoy assumes the ship, an  _Oberth_ -class science vessel, is stolen, along with all the supplies. He knows these ships are often hired out to private organizations, which makes them targets for piracy, and much of the interior of the ship is almost unrecognizably altered from its Federation roots, probably at the hands of a particularly competent or, judging by some of the interior decorating that’s gone down on the bridge, an incredibly eccentric engineer.   
  
After he’s through inoculating the crew, Kirk lurking pointedly by the doors with phaser in full view of McCoy throughout the entire procedure, Kirk shoos everyone out of the room, engages an override code on the door, and promptly pulls down his pants.   
  
McCoy’s eyes widen and he drops his tricorder. “What the hell are you doing, man?!”  
  
“I told you I had a rash,” says Kirk defensively, standing with his hands on his hips, generously flashing McCoy. And I don’t think ‘hydrochloric acid’ is the best answer you can give me.”  
  
McCoy wrinkles his nose and crosses his arms over his chest. “Herpes,” he says, eventually, not moving any closer to the captain. “I can give you a simple STI vaccine that’ll keep this sort of shit from taking hold again, and another dose of actual antibiotics to get rid of the infection you’ve already got.”  
  
“A hypospray?” asks Kirk cautiously, pulling his pants back up.   
  
“Two of ‘em,” nods McCoy, already on his way to the appropriate storage locker. “You’re lucky it’s not worse than it is. When was the last time you saw a doctor, kid?”  
  
Kirk shrugs dismissively. “Been on the run for a while.”  
  
McCoy snorts, and sets to work preparing the hyposprays. He’s only been on board for less than a day, and so far they haven’t even left him alone to go to the damn bathroom. They’re treating him politely enough, and he’s been given quarters, and shown around the ship, but the fear and worry and caution is still there, right under the surface, lurking, and McCoy can’t help but be wary and frightened. For all intents and purposes, they seem to be settling him in for the long haul, and that is terrifying. McCoy doesn’t want to be here, amongst strangers, criminals, and the only thing that’s keeping him from having another breakdown is staying focused on treating the little problems they’re bringing to him.   
  
If he thinks of them as patients, people that need his help, he can relax a little. Plus, they’re all so damned  _young_. If he’s stuck here, for now, the least he can do is his job.   
  
“Hey doc?” It’s Kirk, and he’s moved to stand next to McCoy. “You’ve been standing there staring for, like, a minute.”  
  
“Just thinking,” he says brusquely, turning towards Kirk and unceremoniously jabbing him with the antibiotic. Kirk jerks, squeaking in pain, and stumbling backwards.   
  
“Ow! Fucker!” he cries, accusingly, hand pressed protectively over his neck. “I didn’t see you slamming your needles of death into the rest of my crew with such excessive force.”  
  
“No, they’ve been very nice,” retorts McCoy with a sniff, preparing the next dose pointedly.   
  
“I’m nice,” mutters Kirk, sounding sullen. McCoy turns to him and gestures with the hypospray. Kirk sighs, and tilts his head to the side.   
  
McCoy presses it to his neck, more gently than before, and wonders why they haven’t bothered to remove the sedatives from the medicine locker. If he’d been the type of man to attempt a dramatic escape, he could’ve sedated the entire fucking crew by now and tried to commandeer the shuttle. But he’s not, and he hasn’t. He puts the hypospray away, watching Kirk rub his neck.   
  
“Can I go home now?” asks McCoy, raising his eyebrows. He leans up against the nearest counter, feeling exhausted and displaced and muddled. Are they going to kill him, at the end of whatever this is?   
  
Kirk glances at him, his expression hardening slightly, a minute change. He shrugs. “Sorry, doc. Not yet. You passed your test, though. We definitely grabbed the right guy. You’re a healer to the bones, man, you could’ve killed us all, like, a gazillion times over with a different drug cocktail each.”  
  
“What—” starts McCoy, his eyes widening. The little rat-bastard! “A test?!”  
  
Kirk smirks, and slaps him hard on the shoulder. “Get some sleep. I’ll explain tomorrow.”  


oOo

  
  
The room they’ve assigned him is roughly the size of a broom closet. He’s escorted there by the woman who’d been part of the kidnapping —her name is Uhura, he’s found out, and she’s intimidatingly well-spoken and incredibly courteous. She checks the room twice to make sure there’s nothing in it besides the bed and blanket, then locks him in with the only slightly ominous warning that she’s going to be right outside all night.   
  
When the door slides shut, he’s left in darkness. McCoy stands for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, and then he strips off his clothes, leaving them in a haphazard pile on the floor. Even though it’s not his bed, it’s still  _a_  bed, and he crawls onto it wearily, shimmying underneath the blanket.   
  
Pushing the clamor in his head aside, and telling himself he’ll get back to worrying in the morning, he falls asleep, aching and exhausted.   
  
Only to be awoken again at some unknown time in the interminable night that is space.   
  
At first, McCoy is completely disoriented. He knows that the door has opened and closed, and that the air is moving in such a way that there has to be someone in the room with him, but he’s not positive which way is even up, let alone where the intruder might be.   
  
He lies frozen on the unfamiliar bed, unsure where he is, and when a hand lands on his arm and a voice hisses, “Doc? Bones?” McCoy  _yells_ , clamping both hands around the nearest limb and pulling hard, flipping the other body beneath his own and pinning it down.   
  
It doesn’t last long, the man bucking up and reversing their positions easily, and McCoy yelps and starts to struggle, striking out indiscriminately, until the man barks, “Lights!” and McCoy flinches back from the sudden assault on his eyes. He stills immediately, staring up wide-eyed and confused at Kirk, who has him held tightly by the upper arms. He’s got that amused quirk to his lips, like he finds McCoy to be a particularly entertaining brand of idiot, and McCoy snarls, his adrenalin-filled body tensing.   
  
“What the hell, kid?” he snaps tightly. His knee is in prime position to sock Kirk in the stomach, but he resists the urge.  
  
Kirk huffs a breath and lets him go, climbing off him and settling cross-legged on the mattress. “Jeeze, man, you’re high-strung. Like, I’ve never seen someone so tense. I was trying to wake you up gently, and you totally flipped out on me.”  
  
“High-strung?” cries McCoy, incredulous. “High-strung?! I’ve been kidnapped by pirates, threatened at phaser-point, knocked out twice, tricked, and assaulted with significantly more smug, smarmy charm than any normal person can be expected to tolerate. I woke up and had no fucking clue where I was, just that someone totally unrecognizable was climbing into bed with me. It’s perfectly natural to freak the hell out! Some would even say it’s  _logical_.”  
  
“Ha, point taken,” grins Kirk, holding his hands up defensively. He’s breathing with a bit of a wheeze to his voice that, in his bleary-headed state, McCoy can’t really identify. “I, uh, needed your medical opinion on something.”  
  
McCoy sighs, rubbing his eyes. “What’s the matter? Couldn’t wait till morning? Or what passes for morning in this vacuum-y deathtrap?”  
  
Kirk shrugs, and lifts the hem of his plain back undershirt. In the dim light, McCoy can see red welts on the captain’s skin, raised and inflamed.   
  
Ah. It’s  _that_  kind of wheeze. McCoy sits up, immediately at attention. He scoots along the bed, running his hands along Kirk’s jaw and throat, thumbs feeling for swollen glands. Kirk jerks a little, wary, but relaxes when he notices McCoy is scowling, totally focused on his task.   
  
“Any known allergies, kid?” he asks gruffly, using his thumbs to gently urge Kirk’s jaw open, tilting his head to peer into his throat. Kirk obediently widens his mouth, and when McCoy is done, he shrugs.  
  
“Dunno. Told you, it’s been a while since I saw a doctor.”  
  
“Dammit, this is probably a reaction to the vaccine,” McCoy grumbles, disgruntled. “Any tightness in your throat? Trouble breathing?”  
  
“Yeah, a bit,” admits Kirk, quailing a little under McCoy’s glare. “What? What did I do?”  
  
“This is why people have regularly updated medical files,  _captain_ ,” McCoy snaps, restraining himself from shaking a finger in Kirk’s face like a crotchety old man. These damn kids are always on his fucking _lawn_. “We pump patients full of so many hyposprays that there are a thousand vaccines and antibiotics you could be allergic to! Come on, I saw cortisone in sickbay. At least that’ll keep you from going into shock!”  
  
He’s halfway down the corridor, having stormed out of his room with Kirk trailing him obediently, before he realizes he’s dressed only in boxer shorts and an undershirt. When he glances back, McCoy notices Kirk is dressed similarly, in shorts and the same black long-sleeved Starfleet regulation shirt McCoy wears under his uniform, though Kirk’s still got his phaser on, tucked into the loose elastic of his shorts. He’s got slim, narrow hips, and long, gangly legs. When he raises his gaze to take in the rest of him, he sees messy bed-hair and puffy, just-woken-from-sleep eyes, eyelids half-mast in the gloom of the corridor, dull blue and bleary.  
  
McCoy looks away, eyebrows furrowing. Kirk can’t be a day older than twenty-five.  
  
“Lights,” mutters McCoy as they enter the deserted sickbay, gesturing for Kirk to hop up on a biobed. He checks his breathing and heart-rate, feels his glands again, and administers the cortisone with a stern hand, ignoring Kirk’s half-hearted yelp. “It should go down almost immediately. If it’s not fading in ten minutes, and you start feeling tightness in your chest, tell me, and I’ll give you epinephrine, instead. This would be a lot safer, and easier, if I had  _any_  working knowledge of your medical history.”  
  
McCoy glares at Kirk, pointedly, and crosses his arms. Kirk has the decency to look abashed.   
  
“Sorry, Bones,” he mumbles, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck like a sheepish school boy. “There  _is_  no medical record that’s up to date, for me. I didn’t know I was allergic to anything.”  
  
“Everyone’s allergic to something,” grunts McCoy pessimistically, leaning up against the bed and stifling a yawn. “It’s just a matter of lucking out and discovering it, or remaining blissfully ignorant until you go into anaphylactic shock one day and die in a crappy restaurant because some Andorian shellfish touched your goddamn spaghetti and no one can figure out why you’re turning blue and clutching at your throat.”   
  
He pauses meaningfully, letting his rant sink in, and narrows his eyes at Kirk. “What’s that about? ‘Bones’?”  
  
Kirk’s grin is almost shy. “I don’t know. Doesn’t everyone want a nickname, growing up? It’s better than ‘Leonard’, anyway, did your parents want you to end up a lawyer?”  
  
“‘McCoy’ is fine,” he retorts tightly, frowning at the insult.  
  
“Sure, Bones,” teases Kirk. “Whatever you say.”  
  
They lapse into silence, as McCoy checks the chronometer on the tricorder and sighs. Just a few more minutes, and then maybe he can get a little more sleep before he has to wake up to this nightmare proper.   
  
“You’re doing pretty well,” says Kirk, apropos of nothing. “I mean, dealing with this. You haven’t even tried to escape yet, which, I don’t think I need to remind you, is a monumentally bad idea, just in case you’re still considering it. And you actually seem to give a shit about helping out, which is a nice change.”  
  
“I’m a doctor,” McCoy says curtly, “Not a judge or jury. You haven’t tried to hurt me. And I can’t refuse giving medical aid, if I’m asked. You’ve got a crew of six, on a ship that normally accommodates just under a hundred. I figure there’s some reason for it. And tomorrow, when you tell me all about it, I hope it’s good.”  
  
The tricorder beeps, and McCoy pulls up Kirk’s shirt.   
  
“Look ma, no hives,” announces Kirk with a whoop and a fist-pump, glancing down at his torso.  
  
“Congratulations, you’re no longer going into mild anaphylactic shock,” declares McCoy, through another yawn. “Now can I go back to sleep and pretend this ain’t happenin’?”  


oOo

  
  
McCoy wakes up tangled in the blanket and discovers fairly quickly that the unfortunate reality of his situation is that he’s still on this piece-of-crap ship, hurtling through the depths of space. He doesn’t want to focus on how unnatural it is to even  _be_  in this glorified tin can, or how much thinking of space makes him want to sit with his head in his hands, moaning, until it all passes him by.   
  
Instead, he gets up and puts on his uniform, since he’s got no other clothes. He half-heartedly straightens the blankets, feeling a vague obligation to continue his usual tradition to make the bed, and then wanders to the door. He knocks on it, feeling uncomfortable, and calls, “Hello? Uhura? Kid? Anyone wanna let me out?”   
  
To his surprise, the door whooshes open with a high-pitched, excited whistle. There’s no one in the corridor when he pokes his head out, and, cautiously, he begins to walk, wondering if he should head to sickbay, or just try and find the captain and demand a well-deserved explanation. Or, he could try to steal a shuttle and pilot his way home.   
  
The latter suggestion is dismissed rather readily by the part of him that quite enjoys staying alive, please and thank you.   
  
He doesn’t think Kirk and co. would kill him, but he only barely passed his flight training at the Academy and doesn’t trust himself at the helm of anything more complex than a shuttle simulation.  
  
McCoy doesn’t have to go far to find the rest of the crew; as he wanders past an open doorway, he does a double-take and then turns back, leaning in. “Uh, hi,” he says, cheeks flushing. This is all kinds of awkward. “My…door was open.”  
  
“Hey, Bones,” replies Kirk easily. He’s sitting at the head of the table in the galley, flanked by his entire crew.   
  
McCoy hovers in the doorway. The Vulcan—Spock—is at Kirk’s right-hand side. On his left sits Uhura, and then further down the table sit three more crewmembers and McCoy can’t remember if he ever got their names. The youngest, with the curls and Russian accent, had needed immuno-boosters, and the man with the Scottish brogue had required nearly as many STI vaccines as Kirk. The last, dark-haired and covered in what McCoy discovered were fencing scars, had asked nervously for a tetanus vaccine.   
  
“McCoy,” McCoy corrects automatically, giving Kirk a dirty look. “Look, I hate to interrupt, but I was hoping you’d, you know, tell me why the fuck I’m here. Also, if you let all your prisoners wander around this way, it’s a wonder you idiots are still alive.”  
  
“Come in, doctor,” Spock says, ignoring his commentary, and gesturing at the only available chair at the end of the table.   
  
McCoy enters reluctantly, sinking into the chair. Kirk beams at everyone, and, clapping his hands together, cries, “We’re all here! Excellent. Guys, I’m sure you remember our new friend Doctor McCoy. Bones, this is everyone.” He points out crewmembers in turn, like he’s checking off a list of party guests. “Spock, you know, and Uhura too. You’ve treated the rest—Chekov, Scotty, Sulu.”  
  
The crew murmurs and nods at him, and McCoy nods back, and this is probably the weirdest situation he’s ever been in—getting politely introduced to a group of people that abducted him. But the circumstances are getting less and less terrifying with every second, and even though McCoy knows he shouldn’t be relaxing, he’s not finding enough reasons to stay uncomfortably on edge. There’s a name for this sort of thing, and McCoy has no desire to become too familiar with the concept of Stockholm Syndrome. He doesn’t want to like these people, or care about their well-being. They’re  _criminals_.   
  
“Here’s the deal,” continues Kirk, twining his fingers together on the table in front of him. “We need a doctor for the ship, on a permanent basis. We wanted someone well-trained and knowledgeable, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think of the Federation.”  
  
“You want to keep me,” McCoy says hollowly, and then there it is, the fear is returning. His stomach bottoms out; so much for getting out quickly.  
  
Kirk fixes him with that bright, burning gaze, nodding. “We want you to join us, doc.”  
  
“You’re pirates,” McCoy says, uselessly. “Criminals. You’re wanted. Everyone knows you kidnapped me—do you really think the Federation will just…let me go?”  
  
“They’re going to,” Kirk replies. “Once they get video footage of your graphic and untimely death at the hands of Captain Kirk and his band of brigands.”  
  
There’s that grin on his face again, the smug expression that clearly translates to ‘I’m a fucking genius and there’s nothing you could ever say to convince me otherwise.’ McCoy gapes. Is this kid for  _real_?  
  
“My…death?” he echoes, his fingers tightening into fists. “You’re going to…fake my death? In order to keep me?”  
  
Kirk, very slowly, nods.   
  
“And did you ever stop to think I don’t want to join you?” McCoy asks, just as slowly. “That I might want to, I don’t know, go home? To my own life? That I don’t appreciate getting knocked out, kidnapped, and taken into space against my will?”  
  
“Crossed my mind,” Kirk says flippantly. “Remember how I said I looked into your file?”  
  
McCoy steals glances at the rest of the crew. No one else has so much as said a word, and they’re all watching the back-and-forth between them with interest, turning from Kirk to McCoy and back again like a verbal tennis match. Spock is impassive, Uhura is carefully disinterested, Chekov worried, Sulu vaguely baffled, and Scotty amused. It’s unnerving, to say the least, and now, instead of indignation and fear, McCoy’s moved up to full-on anger.  
  
“And just what did you read in my file, kid?” McCoy asks, biting off each word tightly.  
  
“You’re divorced. You haven’t got kids. You live alone, spend most of your time at the hospital, and, to be honest, you haven’t got much of a life to go back to, man,” Kirk says softly. “But you don’t have to take me at my word. We’re going to show you what we’re about. We’ve got a heist set up for tomorrow night. You’re going to participate. A trial run, so to speak. Depending on how it goes, you can either choose to go home, or stay with us.”  
  
McCoy isn’t quite sure he’s hearing things right. “I get to choose?”  
  
Kirk nods. “You get to choose. What did you take us for, Bones? Savages?”  


oOo

  
  
The Federation Medical Centre on Deep Space outpost K-7 is right on the edge of Klingon territory.   
  
McCoy isn’t sure what events in his life brought him to this point, standing on a transporter pad, awaiting imminent de-molecularization, but he thinks whatever he did, he sure as hell can’t deserve this. There’s a pair of magnetic cuffs around his wrists, and Kirk has spent the last ten minutes making sure McCoy knows how to unlock them.   
  
“Show me again,” he’d demanded, arms crossed.   
  
“Am I getting points for style?” McCoy had snapped back, surreptitiously unlocking them for the fifth time and holding his bare wrists up for Kirk to see.  
  
“Seven out of ten,” Kirk had replied, nodding in satisfaction. “You get the slightest hint of things going south, I want those off, and you out of sight. We didn’t go through the trouble of kidnapping you, only to have you bite it on some deep space hellhole.”  
  
“Thanks for your concern,” McCoy had muttered dryly, snapping the cuffs shut again and sighing. “What if they don’t want me back?”  
  
“Are you kidding? Who wouldn’t want you, Bones?”  
  
“McCoy.”  
  
“Right.  _Bones_.”  
  
McCoy had rolled his eyes, and he now glances at Kirk, who is securing his phaser and exchanging words with Spock in a low voice; the three of them are beaming down first, as the distraction. As soon as Kirk secures the signal dampener to the wall, Uhura will jam communications and disrupt internal sensors, and Sulu and Chekov will beam to the supply warehouse. It seems simple enough, to McCoy. That can only mean it’s all going to go to shit in a truly spectacular way.   
  
“Scotty?” asks Kirk, glancing at the man behind the controls. “Are we set?”  
  
“Aye, captain, you’re going to be met by the commander,” Scotty replies.   
  
“Okay then,” says Kirk, taking a deep breath and setting his phaser to stun. “Punch it.”  
  
McCoy has never been beamed anywhere before. It has to be better than a shuttle, because at least this will be over in just a few seconds, but in theory, he hates the idea of it. Dematerialized and disassembled, particle by particle, and then put back together. What if the reassembly instructions are wrong?   
  
It tingles, briefly, and McCoy grits his teeth, and closes his eyes.   
  
When he opens them again, he’s standing, whole, on a transporter pad, and Spock and Kirk have moved up behind him, phasers pressed to his back.   
  
“Evening, gentlemen,” greets Kirk cheerfully, waving a hand at the small delegation of officers waiting at the base of the transporter pad. “We come bearing a really cranky doctor, and we’re hoping to trade him for something that starts with ‘c’ and ends with ‘redits’. They buy you things, you know? And they have the added advantage of not talking all the fucking time.”  
  
“Hey!” cries McCoy, offended by what he feels are  _totally_  uncalled-for insults that contribute nothing to the ruse. “Snot-nosed little brat—” Spock silences him with a jab to the ribs, and Kirk smirks.   
  
“See what I mean?”  
  
The officers exchange glances, and then the commander steps forward, and gestures to the doorway. “We can conduct our negotiations outside.”  
  
Spock and Kirk keep McCoy between them as they leave the room, and McCoy notes with rising anxiety that Kirk has casually flicked the settings on his phaser from ‘stun’ to ‘kill’. He’s sure it’s for show, and to keep the officers from attempting a rescue of their own, but it doesn’t really ease his nervousness.   
  
As they pass outside of the transporter room, Kirk darts out a quick hand and presses a tiny device to the wall. It blinks green, twice, and then the light stays solid.   


oOo

  
  
They’re still in the corridor, on the way to the conference room, when things go wrong.   
  
McCoy realizes what’s happening first, because Kirk and Spock are walking him along in front of them, so when the commander gestures at his lieutenant, and the phaser appears, McCoy’s eyes widen, he clicks the cuffs open, and hisses, “Kirk! Watch—”  
  
Before he can finish, Spock has shoved him facedown on the floor, the over-enthusiastic pointy-eared son-of-a-bitch, and shots are being fired alarmingly close over his head. Someone grabs him, dragging him forward, and he realizes, distantly, that this is a rescue attempt.   
  
“Doctor McCoy,” says the commander, dragging him to the alcove of a doorway and shoving him out of the line of fire, “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of the pirates!”  
  
And McCoy should just let it go, he should nod and stay out of the way, and wait until he can get transport home, but he doesn’t. He barely thinks about it as he shakes the cuffs off, wraps his right hand around his left, and swings his arms up like he’s spiking a volley ball. He catches the commander on the chin, sending him spinning into unconsciousness before the man even realizes what McCoy is doing. It should be more shocking than it is, but a curious disconnectedness has settled over him.   
  
When the phaser fire dies down, McCoy shouts, “It’s Bones, don’t shoot!” and steps out. Spock and Kirk are at the opposite end of the corridor, on guard, but Kirk relaxes when he sees him, his phaser nosing down towards the floor.   
  
“Did you just take out the commander?!” he demands incredulously, surprised blue eyes flickering down to the body half-visible at McCoy’s feet.   
  
McCoy flushes a little, squaring his shoulders tensely. “Jesus Christ, man, I just assaulted a Starfleet officer! We’re not talking about pie, here, or sunshine and rainbows and kittens and  _fucking unicorns_. I could get  _court martialed_.”  
  
Kirk looks like he wants to reply, his eyes bright with disbelieving laughter, but instead he shoots Spock a glance, nodding at him, and then Spock is slipping away down another hallway, scouting for potential reinforcements. Kirk comes towards McCoy, snatching a phaser off the floor and handing it to him.   
  
“Are they dead?” McCoy asks, reluctantly taking the phase pistol and holding it loosely, as if it might bite.  
  
“Nah, stunned,” replies Kirk, gesturing at the sprawled officers with a careless hand. “We’re not savages, remember?”  
  
McCoy grunts. “So, kid, I’m guessing that wasn’t the way the plan was supposed to go?”  
  
“Not quite,” admits Kirk, nudging an unconscious officer with his foot. “But it’s okay, I got the signal from Sulu and Chekov, they just need a few more minutes to finish transporting supplies onboard, they have to do it in pieces. Uhura’s got the dampener drowning out any inbound and outbound communications, and Scotty’s standing by to beam us back as soon as we’ve got all the supplies. You okay?”  
  
“Sure,” shrugs McCoy, waving his arms dramatically. “I’m  _peachy_. It wasn’t really me they were gunning for.”  
  
“I don’t take it personally,” says Kirk, with a quick grin. It falls off his face when footfalls reverberate down the corridor, followed by muffled voices. “Shit, get up against the wall, Bones,” he commands. “Use the doorway.”  
  
McCoy has just flattened himself against the bulkhead when he hears more shots fired, and Kirk slides up to press his body tight to McCoy’s, warm and tense, craning his neck to peer past him and cursing under his breath.   
  
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit, stay right here, doc,” orders Kirk, leveling his phaser down the corridor and firing a few warning shots. McCoy can hear more shouts echoing down, now, and the sound of steadily approaching running feet, and once again, the absurdity of this situation hits him. Why isn’t he yelling for help, asking for someone to come take him away from the lunatic currently shielding him with his own body? Why the hell is Kirk  _protecting_  him?  
  
McCoy is so tired of absolutely nothing making any fucking  _sense_.  
  
“Well, I sure as hell ain’t waltzing out into the corridor to get myself shot!” growls McCoy, clutching the phaser, the shape unfamiliar in his hands. He knows how to use one, but so far in his line of work he’s never had to, and he’d hoped to keep things that way. “I never signed up to get nuked by my own goddamned side!”   
  
“Good man,” mumbles Kirk distractedly, clearly not really listening. Neither Kirk nor McCoy thinks to check down the opposite end of the hallway. Kirk had sent Spock down that way to secure the transporter room, and McCoy had been too preoccupied with staying alive to spare the necessary brain cells needed to anticipate the danger.  
  
Either way, a figure appears about ten feet away at McCoy’s right, a flicker in his peripheral vision, and he turns, startled, and aims his phaser at the man, firing haphazardly. And because McCoy probably couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn in an empty field on a bright, clear day, he utterly misses his target. It doesn’t matter, though, because Kirk doesn’t seem to think he’s got any manner of aim either.   
  
“Bones!” he shouts, grabbing McCoy by the shoulders and forcefully swinging him around to swap their positions. The blast catches Kirk in the back; he jerks against McCoy, and then slumps, gasping. It’s a stun shot, close range, and Kirk fades out, his eyes wide, pupils blown, collapsing slowly.   
  
“Oh, hell no!” cries McCoy, shocked. Kirk is slumped against him, McCoy’s arms around his waist to him from toppling to the floor. He drags Kirk back into the alcove, firing randomly down the hall to keep the oncoming officers away and hoping he has enough time—he paws at Kirk’s clothes, extricating the communicator and flipping it open, shouting, “Enterprise!  _Enterprise_ , you bastards better beam us up right the fuck now, the kid’s been fucking  _shot_  and they’re nearly on top of me. This is McCoy to Enterprise, do you fucking read me? Scott, you lecherous bastard, I will  _personally_  inject you with all three strains of Bajoran measles if you don’t beam us up,  _NOW_!”  
  
The tingly feeling abruptly starts at his fingertips, as if Scotty just guiltily kicked his feet off his console and put away some porn, and spreads through his entire body, blue swirls of psychedelic lights engulfing him as he cradles Kirk’s body.   
  
The lights are even sort of  _pretty_ , but McCoy is uncomfortably aware that he’s watching his molecular structure get deconstructed atom-by-atom by a Scotsman with a drinking problem.

 

oOo

 

“You stupid kid,” McCoy rants, as Spock helps him turn Kirk over onto his front on the biobed. He tears the kid’s shirt right down the middle, and Kirk grunts, in evident protest to—what? The pain? The insult? McCoy’s got no fucking clue, but what he  _has_  got is Spock standing over him, expressionless but stiff with tension, and Kirk’s vitals are stable but weak though that could change any second.   
  
“Stun!” laughs McCoy humorlessly, kicking the elderly dermal regenerator into gear with a hard whack off the wall and setting it aside while he pulls on gloves, setting to work removing bits of charred clothing from the wound. “They shouldn’t call it a ‘stun’ setting, they should call it a ‘maims at close range’ setting! Goddammit, I fucking hate phasers, Mr. Spock. He’s probably suffered some mild nerve damage -– I’ve got no idea if this regenerator can even handle a round long enough to fix him up without massive scarring. Give me that hypospray,” he orders abruptly.   
  
Spock passes it over silently, dark eyes fixed on McCoy.   
  
McCoy knows Spock’s probably got a mess of things he wants to say to him, but his captain is bloodstained and unconscious, and McCoy ignores the staring and works on, quietly, occasionally barking out orders to Spock, in lieu of a nurse assisting him.  
  
The quiet in the room eventually gets stifling; McCoy didn’t think Vulcans could get uncomfortable, but something prompts Spock to pipe up. “The captain protected you.” It’s a statement, not a question.   
  
McCoy grunts, loading a hypospray with another painkiller when Kirk starts to squirm restlessly. “Idiot pulled me out of the way. Get this: he saved me from the people who were trying to rescue  _me_  from  _him_! Has he always been such a stubborn goddamn moron?”  
  
Spock blinks impassively, his eyes on Kirk as he relaxes with a faint whimper and stops fighting McCoy. “I have known Jim Kirk for some years. In that time, he has always displayed the same headstrong ability to staunchly frustrate most individuals he comes across.”  
  
McCoy snorts, and finally,  _finally_  looks up at Spock. He’s startled to see a trickle of green blood congealing slowly on Spock’s brow. His left eye is clenched shut tightly, swollen and bruised.   
  
“Dammit, man, you didn’t think to tell me you’d been injured?” demands McCoy, gesturing at Spock even as he seals Kirk’s wound and wipes away sticky blood.   
  
“The captain’s condition was life-threatening,” Spock says calmly, his hands clasped behind his back.   
  
McCoy’s eyes narrow and he grumpily holds his hand out for the antibiotic gel. Their gaze doesn’t shift as Spock passes it over.   
  
“It’s gonna take longer to heal, now,” he accuses, rubbing a hand over his forehead and leaving behind a smear of Kirk’s blood. “You Vulcans, you’re all emotionally-stunted, unnatural—” He stops himself and sighs at Spock’s raised eyebrow. “You sit tight,” he says, pointing at him with a gloved finger, tone ominous. “I’ll deal with you later.”  
  
Eventually, when Kirk is stabilized and sleeping peacefully, and McCoy is satisfied that the worst of the damage is repaired, he allows himself to relax slightly. He leans back, switching off the dermal regenerator, and says, “The wound’s clean, skin and muscle re-grown.”  
  
“Nerve damage?” prompts Spock, calmly taking the regenerator from McCoy and putting it away for lack of anything better to do.   
  
“He might have shaky hands for a few days, we’ll see, but it’s not permanent,” sighs McCoy. “Now you. Superman. Sit your ass down here and close your other eye.”  
  
Spock seems ready to refuse, hesitating, but the look on McCoy’s face brooks no argument. He sits, obediently closing his good eye as McCoy leans in, his scowl spreading disapprovingly across his face as if Spock just spat on his shoes.  
  
“What the hell happened? You’ve got—Jesus Christ, boy, there’s fucking shrapnel in here!” cries McCoy, wielding his tweezers like the trident of an avenging god. “You could’ve had serious corneal damage!”  
  
“I do not, doctor, the worst of the damage is superficial,” protests Spock, though his voice is, if McCoy is hearing things right and if Vulcans are actually capable of tonal variation, faintly sheepish.   
  
“Yeah, and where did you get your medical degree, Mr. Spock?” demands McCoy sourly, removing the last piece of foreign matter and carefully peeling the eyelid open to flash his scanner into Spock’s eye. Spock, because he is a Vulcan, does not flinch, and McCoy, because he is a professional, doesn’t mention the fact that Spock does not flinch. “Wonderland? You got lucky. I’m gonna have to apply a bandage.”  
  
There is a long, uncomfortable pause. “I assure you, doctor, that I will have no trouble keeping my eye closed,” Spock eventually says firmly.  
  
“And I assure  _you_ , Spock, that some sort of barrier between your eye and the outside world is necessary to prevent infection,” snaps McCoy, wiping away fluids and applying a layer of the same gel he’d just spent fifteen minutes applying to the hole in Kirk’s back. “You can’t blame this on me, Spock, you’re the one that left treatment by the wayside. I could’ve had this cleaned up and healed in minutes.”  
  
“The captain,” Spock repeats, forcefully, and McCoy sighs and rolls his eyes.   
  
“At least you look more like a proper pirate, now,” he points out, struggling very hard not to laugh and only mildly succeeding. The patch seals the raw flesh from outside infection, and McCoy wraps a length of gauze around Spock’s head to keep it from moving around.  
  
When the eye-patch is secure, McCoy steps back, a hand over his mouth as he hides his smile. “You look dashing, Spock,” he chuckles.  
  
Spock is standing stiffly with his arms clasped behind his back, chin raised, gazing down at him through his undamaged eye with a withering expression. That is, if Vulcans  _had_  expressions. To McCoy, he mostly looks blankly unimpressed.   
  
McCoy waves a hand at him. “Okay, you’re done. Now get out of here, I have shit to do.”  
  
Spock regards him patiently, evidently deep in thought for a moment, before inclining his head and quietly leaving the room.   
  
McCoy turns to Kirk, who’s been positioned on his side, and is sleeping comfortably. He watches him for a moment, wondering what in the universe possessed this man— this fucking  _child_  -– to reverse their positions and absorb a hit meant for him. It doesn’t make any sense, and McCoy has a knot in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t know how to make sense of most of the thoughts crashing into each other inside his head, so he gives in to the more familiar wave of anger surging up inside him.  
  
“What the fuck were you doing, kid?” he snaps, slamming his fist against the wall. “You met me yesterday! You’ve got absolutely no stake in my well-being, but you swapped our places so I wouldn’t get fried. What the fuck.”  
  
There’s no reply from Kirk, besides a soft snore, and McCoy slumps down in the seat beside the bed, tipping his face into his hands.   
  
He must fall asleep that way. There’s no other explanation for the painful crick in his neck when he starts awake, or the fact that his elbows are numb. But something’s woken him, and he lifts his head, eyes red, hair a mess, to see that Kirk is watching him through his eyelashes, eyes half-closed in soreness and exhaustion.   
  
“Kid,” mumbles McCoy, scrubbing his face with his hands. “Well, you’re alive. I’m actually pleased about that, but don’t ask me why. Doctors don’t like seeing patients die, I guess.”  
  
Kirk licks his lips. “If you’re not going to call me ‘captain’, or even just ‘Kirk’,” he says hoarsely, “then you can at least call me ‘Jim’. Anything is better than ‘kid’.”  
  
McCoy looks away, awkward, and the weariness settles over his shoulders like a heavy, cumbersome coat. “We ain’t friends,” he points out, in a soft, worn-out voice. Calling him by his first name would be too familiar, too difficult to reconcile with this situation. McCoy wishes, sullenly, that he didn’t have to think so much. “You kidnapped me.”  
  
“And you just helped secure four tons of much-needed medical supplies for a little planet outside of Federation space that needs an experienced doctor to dole out the cure to a plague that’s been troubling them,” Kirk explains, painstakingly slow, his tongue sticking to his teeth. “Starfleet paid the tab, but we’re distributing the aid.”  
  
“That’s what you wanted the supplies for?” McCoy asks in surprise. “What you really need  _me_  for? I thought….”  
  
“That we were gonna sell them?” asks Kirk sharply, his blue eyes suddenly focused unflinchingly on McCoy.   
  
McCoy has the decency to blush, because even if this fiasco is making less sense to him by the minute, he knows this kid just saved his life. “Sorry. I guess I did. And after your aid mission?”  
  
“Then we’d sure as hell love for you to stick with us, but I’ll bring you home personally, if I have to,” sighs Kirk, fidgeting on the uncomfortable bed. “This is what we do, Bones. You think we’d be flying in this piece of junk if we had cash? We rob Feds because they’ve got the goods, but we only keep the necessary supplies and spread the rest out to outposts and planets that aren’t lucky enough to be part of the big boy’s club. The Federation is a nice idea, but the execution still leaves a lot to be desired.”  
  
It’s the most Kirk has said to him since they met, and a small, snide part of McCoy mutters that he didn’t think Kirk knew that many words, let alone was aware of how to successfully arrange them into coherent sentences. But another part of him finds itself nodding along, all sorts of past thoughts regarding the Federation’s relief efforts and humanitarian aid procedures bubbling back up to the surface of his mind, clamoring for attention.   
  
McCoy abruptly decides this is Too Damn Much To Comprehend, right now. He crosses his arms and directs a glare down at Kirk. “And I suppose you think you’re some kind of Robin Hood reborn? Look, kid, I’m close to believing all this bullshit about medical aid, but it still don’t change the fact that you kidnapped me. What I want to know is why the hell you kept me from getting shot.”  
  
Kirk moves his shoulders slightly, and McCoy belatedly realizes the motion is meant to be a shrug. “You’re a doctor,” he slurs, rapidly heading down the path towards unconscious oblivion. “You’re worth more’n me. Galaxy needs more people like you. Dedicated.”  
  
McCoy stares. Good God, he’s been kidnapped by a bleeding-heart rebel pirate man-child captain with a martyr complex.   
  
McCoy needs a drink.  


oOo

  
  
He wakes up to Jim Kirk throwing balls of gauze at his face.   
  
When McCoy realizes what he’s doing, and that he  _got out of bed_  to do it, he stumbles off the biobed he’s been sleeping on and lurches unsteadily to his feet, leveling an accusing finger at the only mildly sheepish captain. “ _You_! Dammit, kid, you’re supposed to be in bed!”  
  
Kirk warily puts an exam table between them and grins innocently, shrugging. “I’ve been up for hours, and you were just snoring away, doc. I got bored.”  
  
“What part of ‘ _you’ve got a hole in your fucking back_ ’ needs clarification?” demands McCoy, exasperated. He rubs the sleep roughly from his eyes and starts to edge around the exam table towards Kirk. And Kirk, the sly little bastard, moves around the other way. They both stop, eyes meeting over the table, and for a moment, there’s an impasse.   
  
“And you better stop wasting my medical supplies,” continues McCoy, practically growling. As he stares down Kirk, he starts mentally calculating the force required to launch himself up and over the table, and whether he’s feeling up to attempting the maneuver at all. There’s a twinge in his back that makes him feel really fucking old, and he’s been doing more running around lately than he’d like.  
  
“ _Your_  supplies?” teases Kirk, eyes bright. His colour is back, at least, and he doesn’t seem to be moving around with too much difficulty.   
  
McCoy scowls. “I don’t see anybody else on this rust-bucket with a medical degree.”  
  
Kirk just smirks, obnoxiously, and his hands tighten their grip on the edge of the table, muscles tensing. In the split second where Kirk is pushing himself off and spinning around, that’s when McCoy heaves himself over the heavy table with a grunt, using his upper body to slide across until he’s thumping to the floor at a dead run, chasing Kirk through the sickbay and out into the corridor, cursing under his breath.   
  
Kirk is laughing, moving not at all like a man that spent a couple of hours enduring surgery yesterday, and McCoy grits his teeth and shouts, “I ain’t putting you back together if you hurt yourself again, kid! Dammit, get the fuck back here so I can run a scan!”  
  
“C’mon, doc, stretch your legs a little!” is Kirk’s response, and is he—? Dammit, the little prick  _is_ , he’s half-turned to face him mid-run and he’s  _sticking his tongue out_  at McCoy.   
  
“You so much as trip on some loose deck plating and reopen the wound after I spent  _hours_  -– god-fucking- _dammit_ , Jim!” he cries, panting, and he has to stop, because he’s fucking  _tired_ , he’s barely slept, they haven’t had time to eat, and if he keeps pushing himself he’s going to collapse.   
  
He bends at the waist, hands braced on his knees, gulping air and wondering what possessed him to think chasing an injured patient was a totally awesome and hilariously appropriate idea.   
  
“Medical track students don’t get much exercise at Starfleet, huh?” asks Kirk, from right next to him, and when McCoy lifts his head to glare at him, not even surprised he’s managed to appear so close, the kid just grins at him, and puts a hand on McCoy’s shoulder, patting him reassuringly. “It’s okay, we’ll get you in shape.” He pauses, and his grin spreads. “You called me ‘Jim’.”  
  
“No, I didn’t,” McCoy says firmly, when he’s got his breath back. He straightens up, pointedly adjusting his uniform, and crossing his arms. “And you know what you’re going to do, right now?”  
  
“Get my ass back to sickbay so you can scan me?” Kirk suggests helpfully. “And not run off again, even if it’s the funniest fucking thing I’ve seen in weeks? Did you sprint or something in high school, Bones? Your legs are  _amazing_. You just need some gym time, get back into it. You’ve got no endurance stamina.” He mimes jogging, his eyebrows raised, and McCoy can’t help it—he laughs.   
  
He fucking  _laughs_ , actual, honest-to-God, laughter, bubbling out of him and taking them both by surprise, if the startled look on Kirk’s face is anything to go by.   
  
“Hey,” says Kirk, his hands still curled loosely into fists, his body frozen in a stance of pretend running. “Hey, Bones, that’s new. I mean, that’s pretty cool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you happy before.”  
  
McCoy wipes his eyes, still chuckling helplessly, and shakes his head, amazed. “Jim—kid, you’ve known me  _three days_. What part of that keeps failing to enter your thick skull?”  
  
Kirk shrugs, his eyes bright and earnest. “Yeah, but it feels like longer.”  
  
Yeah, McCoy realizes with some surprise, yeah, it does.  


oOo

  
  
God help him, he’s starting to like the people on this sorry excuse for a ship.   
  
Jim Kirk, he thinks, as he passes an ailing tricorder over Kirk’s back for a checkup, Jim Kirk is like lungworm; burrowing in deep before you even have a chance of realizing you’ve been infected with something so blatantly obnoxious and parasitic.   
  
However, unlike lungworm, Kirk has the added benefit of being the particular brand of obnoxious that’s actually kind of charismatic and amusing, not that McCoy is going to admit this out loud. How else would he have attracted his small but fiercely loyal crew? They’re certainly not here for the money, of which there is approximately  _none_ , and they can’t possibly stick around for the joys of being wanted by the Federation for a list of crimes as long as McCoy’s leg.   
  
Spock is typically Vulcan, which means McCoy ends half his encounters with him either frothing at the mouth in rage, or trying desperately to figure out if he’s just pulling a massive fucking prank on all of humanity by being as deadpan as possible and pretending he doesn’t understand what McCoy means when he says, “dead as a door-nail.”   
  
(“Door-nails are an obsolete structure, doctor, as well as being objects incapable of death, due to the fact that they were never alive to begin with.”  
  
“Shut up, Spock.”)  
  
The eye-patch he’s prescribed makes him feel better, whenever he sees Spock in it, and every time Spock asks if it’s time to remove it, McCoy assures him it’ll just be a little while longer until it’s safe for him to expose his injury to the unforgiving elements of space.  
  
He likes Uhura, who is calm and quiet and actually very funny, and Sulu, who is competent and interesting to talk to. Chekov is excitable, but earnest, and Scotty is completely fucking incomprehensible, but he offers McCoy a shot of whiskey, one day when he’s wandering into the engineering room, lost in thought, and after he’s finished choking back tears -– that stuff is  _real_ , dammit, not synthesized or replicated —Scotty pats him on the back and asks him for a booster against good old fashioned Earth-native Chlamydia.   
  
McCoy doesn’t really want to know where Scotty keeps catching his small but rapidly-growing collection of thriving STIs, and decides it’s not worth the horror of asking.   
  
Two weeks after the successful heist, and they’re still on-route to the affected system, somewhere buried deep in the Beta Quadrant. It’s disturbingly easy to settle into life on board —during the day, McCoy sorts through the supplies they stole, dividing stock, sorting what they’ll need to immunize and treat the plague Kirk told him about, and cleaning up the tiny ship’s poor excuse for a sickbay. When he gets tired of that, he wanders the ship, talking with whoever he comes across, and often joining Scotty in engineering for a card game or a drink. Kirk usually turns up for those, displaying an uncanny sense of timing and appearing whenever alcohol is being consumed, normally demanding a drink in exchange for his silence.   
  
“Who are you going to tattle to?” McCoy had grinned, half-drunk and feeling loose-limbed and relaxed like he hadn’t felt since the divorce. “Yourself?”  
  
It’s almost comfortable. McCoy doesn’t ask what’s going to happen after they reach their destination anymore. If he talks to Kirk about it, Kirk will probably ask whether he wants to stay or go, and McCoy doesn’t know anymore.   
  
Once again, he dwells on how easy it  _should_  be. He thinks of his empty apartment, back in San Francisco, and his residents and students, and aside from a pang, deep in his gut, he doesn’t feel much for his old life besides weariness. He’s been in transit, since the divorce, and all Starfleet had done was provide an appropriately involving distraction.   
  
Out here, with minimal duties to attend to at the moment, he’s restless, but there’s also the excitement of doing something meaningful tugging at his heart. There’s the prospect of direct contact with an alien species that needs help which the Federation isn’t able to provide. It comes down to the same thing, healing, but somehow it’s more immediate, urgent. Everything at Starfleet had always felt distant, once-removed. He both hates and loves it out here. He wonders if this is where he actually belongs.   
  
When they’re finished with the plague, he’ll decide what to do. He thinks it’s what Kirk is waiting for, as well. Kirk, who doesn’t actually call him anything besides “Bones”, anymore.   
  
“I read it in a book,” he eventually explained to McCoy. “It’s what they used to call surgeons, you know, ‘sawbones’. And I thought you really are a doctor to the core, right down to your bones.”  
  
McCoy had looked at him, wide-eyed, and Kirk had chuckled self-consciously, ducking his head. “This is why you don’t explain nicknames.”   
  
“It’s better than Leonard,” McCoy had blurted, looking away from Kirk, directing his gaze intently at a nondescript bulkhead.   
  
And dammit, it  _was_.   
  
McCoy frowns, picking absently at a loose thread on his shirt, and staring aimlessly out into sickbay’s viewscreen. He’s still holding the tricorder over Kirk’s back, doing the last of his checks on the phaser wound, and Kirk is dangling his legs over the edge of the bed, curiously watching McCoy come back into himself.   
  
“You totally zoned out,” he says, picking up his shirt and pulling it over his head after McCoy puts the tricorder away. “What were you thinking about? Did my sculpted manly torso distract you?”  
  
“I couldn’t think of anything else,” McCoy drawls, with a solemn nod. “Lost in a sea of pectorals and nipples and what-have-you. I probably won’t be able to look at you the same way ever again from now on.”  
  
“Damn straight,” agrees Kirk in satisfaction. “That’s how it should be. Hey, we’ll be reaching Bellerophon in a few hours. Ready to go all super-doc on that plague’s ass?”  
  
“I am not certain I comprehend your colorful Earth colloquialism, captain,” McCoy says, in his best approximation of Spock’s stony lack of tone. “You  _are_  aware that plagues do not have rectums?”  
  
And, seriously, if Jim insists on throwing medical supplies around in  _his_  sickbay, the little shit is so totally not allowed down here anymore.   


oOo

  
  
In the end, after just over two weeks of his life building up to this moment, it’s really a bit of an anti-climax.   
  
He doesn’t have time to think of his future, he’s too damn busy with the hundreds of patients patiently filing through his makeshift trauma centre, which they’ve set up in the planet’s tiny clinic. He administers the vaccine to the citizens who have been lucky enough to be overlooked by the plague, and the cure to all the rest, with Spock and Kirk keeping his supply of loaded hyposprays fresh and ready for use.   
  
It takes nearly three days to get through everyone, but finally, after an exhaustive check to make sure the illness has indeed been cured, and every patient has been seen to, McCoy spends hours with the doctors on the planet, leaving them enough supplies to adequately control any potential future outbreaks.   
  
Exhausted and satisfied and more fulfilled than he’s ever felt, McCoy exits the hospital to find only Kirk waiting for him.   
  
“So, that happened,” says Kirk, looking…proud? McCoy can’t tell, Kirk is backlit by the sun, and he’s blinding to look at.  
  
“Yeah. Everyone else already beam up?” McCoy asks, blinking sluggishly at Kirk.   
  
“Yeah, Spock went up to secure the ship, and I gave the rest a bit of shore leave. We decided to stay in orbit for a few days,” Kirk replies, giving McCoy a hearty clap on the shoulder and sending up a wave of dust. The planet is mostly desert, and McCoy is sweat-soaked and grimy.   
  
When the sand settles, Kirk is watching McCoy, his expression closed and unreadable, and McCoy sighs, knowing what Kirk wants to ask and still finding himself unable to give an answer. The kid’s waited this long, he can damn well wait until McCoy’s good and ready. “Where’s the shuttle?” he asks, instead.  
  
“Just over the crest,” Kirk answers, and he holds McCoy’s gaze for a moment, and then turns to point over a dune. “I was waiting behind for you to see if you wanted to just beam up and get some sleep, or if you maybe wanted to see something cool.”  
  
“What’s that?” McCoy asks, yawning into his fist. He’s dead on his feet, but Kirk is hard to refuse.   
  
“There’s a weird sort of planetary anomaly, like northern lights, you can see it from a few miles up. We could fly out in the shuttle,” suggests Kirk, and there it is, that hopeful, eager grin. Dammit. “It wouldn’t take long.”  
  
“The shuttle, huh?” McCoy grunts, rubbing at his eye to get out some grit. “That wasn’t a good experience, last time I checked.”  
  
“Yeah, you nearly puked in my lap,” recalls Kirk, with a contrary grin. “It was a magical time for us both, Bones. Look, you’ll probably fall asleep the second you sit down. I’ll wake you up when we get there, and then you’ll have totally bypassed the worst part of it.”  
  
It does, surprisingly, make sense, and McCoy grudgingly admits this in the private sanctuary of his mind. A lot of what Kirk says makes sense, which is what’s worrying, most of the time.   
  
The puppyish expression on Kirk’s face will crumple like a handful of antique paper if McCoy refuses, and it’s not like he can be fucked right now to think of when he even started caring about how Kirk  _feels_ , but whatever his reasons, McCoy rolls his eyes, crosses his arms over his chest, and grumbles, “Okay, fine. But it’s your own fault if I vomit inside your pathetic soup can of a transportation device.”   
  
“Knowing you, Bones, you’d probably short-circuit something and we’d end up rocketing into this system’s sun,” Kirk laughs, throwing an arm around McCoy’s shoulders as they start to crest the dune towards the rusting heap Kirk has the stunning gall to gleefully call a ‘shuttle’.   
  
McCoy bumps his shoulder companionably into Kirk’s chest, and says, quietly, “This is weird, isn’t it?”  
  
Kirk doesn’t ask him to clarify what he means by ‘this’. He just grins, looking particularly smug, and agrees, “Yeah. That’s the James T. Kirk influence, buddy.”  


oOo

  
  
He doesn’t even remember getting on board, or sitting down at all—all McCoy knows is that he must have been deeply asleep from the moment he settled into the oft-repaired co-pilot seat, because when the shuttle jerks under him, he’s lurched, bewildered, into wakefulness. He can’t have been asleep for long—not enough to get fully through a cycle, judging by his sandy eyes and shaky hands. The shuttle groans, and McCoy’s teeth rattle at the force of it, and he can feel the vibrations down to the roots of his hair.   
  
“Jim,” he mumbles, his mouth fuzzy. “The fuck?” He blinks blearily at Kirk to his left, in the pilot’s seat, and Kirk doesn’t even turn his head to acknowledge him. His eyes are fixed on the instrument panels spewing line upon line of coded data.  
  
“Hey,” he eventually replies, “Uh, yeah, we’ve got a bit of thing, here. A situation, maybe.”  
  
McCoy’s stomach, annoyingly prompt, tightens, and the nausea begins to rise, building steadily until McCoy is unconsciously clenching his teeth. He grips the armrests and tries not to look out the viewscreen directly in front of him. His chest is tight, as though there’s a weight pressing down, and his head is starting to spin, round and round, like the little whirring sensor in his tricorder.   
  
“What’s going on?” he manages to demand, his tongue thick from sleep and dust and days spent living on coffee and ration bars and frustratingly short catnaps. “Just tell me, kid.”  
  
“Looks like sitting around in the dust for days didn’t do this heap of scrap any good,” Kirk mutters, his eyebrows furrowed as he punches at flashing lights on his console. “We’ve got a massive clog in the rear engines, and the navigation system has overheated. We’re dead in the water. There’s power, but I can’t make us go anywhere. That’s not even the best part—this shuttle doesn’t have a communications system. It’s been busted for years.”  
  
“How far are we from the ship?” asks McCoy, and his breathing sounds unbearably loud to his own ears, high and reedy and shallow.   
  
“Not far. Spock will pick us up on a regular sensor sweep, but that could be anywhere between two to six hours, depending on the last time he checked the readings,” Kirk mumbles, still tapping away at the console. “Environmental controls will definitely hold till then, so we’ll be fine, I think.”  
  
“You think,” McCoy repeats, trying to keep the rising panic and fear out of his voice and failing miserably. “You  _think_. Goddammit, kid, what happens if you’re wrong?”  
  
“Then we’ll run out of air when we run out of power,” Kirk snaps, flashing a glance at McCoy and then guiltily shifting it back to his monitor. “Look, we’re barely three thousand kilometers from the ship. There’s no fucking way Spock won’t see us floating there on the sensors, looking pathetic.”  
  
“Your communicator?” asks McCoy desperately, shooting Kirk a wide-eyed, paranoid glance. Kirk winces.  
  
“I left it in the medical centre, on the surface,” he mutters, not meeting McCoy’s eyes.  
  
McCoy starts to audibly grind his teeth.   
  
“I thought we’d only be gone a couple of hours,” Kirk says defensively. “All our shit’s still down there, too.”  
  
“Listen, kid, don’t take it personal, but shut the fuck up, okay?” snaps McCoy, curling into his seat and shutting his eyes tightly. If he could bring himself to move, he’d shift to the back of the shuttle, where there’s no huge fucking window angled down towards the burnt sienna sprawl of Bellerophon, but his muscles have gone rigid and tense. He settles for keeping his eyes shut to ward off vertigo.   
  
He can hear Kirk shifting around, but he doesn’t dare look, because for all their jokes, McCoy throwing up into some equipment is an occurrence that’s growing rapidly more likely to happen.   
  
“You know, this’ll sound wrong, but I’m glad we kidnapped you,” says Kirk, his voice coming from directly in front of McCoy, and he opens his eyes, startled.  
  
“What?” he demands, dumbly. Kirk is sitting on the co-pilot’s console, cross-legged. His body is doing a pretty good job of blocking out the viewscreen.   
  
“It’s not something we’d ever done before, and I agonized about it for weeks,” Kirk continues, as if McCoy hadn’t interrupted. “I thought maybe we should hire a doctor to do what we needed, but once you bring money into it, who knows what kind of person you’re getting, you know? We eventually decided if we wanted the best, we had to go to Starfleet. And I justified it to myself, because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right? Or, that’s what Spock said. I knew the outcome would be worth it.”  
  
McCoy just stares, sitting up a little and clearing his throat. Kirk’s eyes are bright and focused, fixed on a nondescript point somewhere on the floor, midway between them.   
  
“This planet needed help, and they’d had foreign aid requests denied, like, six times,” Kirk continues, tone oddly flat. “The entire planet would’ve died. It’s a defect, in their genetics, that means they have no ability to build immunity against this plague.”  
  
“I know,” mumbles McCoy, feeling hoarse.   
  
Kirk laughs, dry and amused. “Of course you do. So we had no choice, you know? I hoped we’d find someone that was worth the trouble, worth the crime we’d get saddled with. And we were beyond fucking lucky, with you. So for a million and one reasons, I’m not sorry we did it.”  
  
“I kept telling myself it was Stockholm Syndrome,” McCoy replies, after a long moment of silence. “But you’re not a criminal. You’re a fucking kid, with a long whacky string of ideals, and you’re doing anything you can to make sure you don’t drown in this galaxy’s lousy excuse for a governmental structure. You’re everything I was too cowardly to be, Jim.”  
  
Kirk laughs noisily at this, loud and open and honestly surprised. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re no more a coward than you are a cuddly toy, Bones. You’re amazing. I want to, like, build a shrine to you, but that’s creepy. I’d give you a medal, or something.  _Starfleet_  should give you a medal, when you get back. You saved a whole fucking planet.”  
  
McCoy closes his eyes. It’s his only defense against the force of nature that is James T. Kirk; it’s the only thing he has left in his power to do.   
  
And so, he can feel it rather than see it when Kirk leans in, settling a foot on the seat of McCoy’s chair and nudging lightly at his thigh, between his legs, to balance himself. The brush of lips against his is warm, and soft, and Jim smells like hot, dry air, and sand, and sweat. McCoy just lets him brush their lips together, for a moment, and then he leans in a little, moving his mouth against Kirk’s, slow and languorous.   
  
When Kirk makes a small, impatient noise, McCoy parts his lips and their tongues slide together, wet and easy. McCoy sighs and the knot in his stomach loosens as he slumps down in his chair, pressing a hand over his face  
  
“Why’d you pick me?” McCoy asks at length, his voice muffled.   
  
“What?” Kirk sounds startled.   
  
“At the hospital. You asked for the senior medical officer, but you knew that already, didn’t you?” McCoy asks, and his tone is a little harder, now, more insistent. He’s been toying with this possibility, and it doesn’t seem that hard to believe, now. Not after how far they’ve come.   
  
“You didn’t take your eyes off me, that entire time,” he explains. “You rounded me up last, like the group you had in the exam room was just a show to make me believe your little abduction was random. You knew exactly who you wanted. You had my file before you picked me up, right?”  
  
Kirk doesn’t immediately reply. He’s fidgeting, his clothing rustling nervously as he moves around. “I don’t even know if I can say anything that’ll make sense,” he finally replies. “Why didn’t you ever try to escape? We gave you a hundred opportunities.”  
  
McCoy sighs. “I don’t fucking know, kid. Jim. I don’t know. Maybe it’s your magnetic charm, huh?”  
  
Kirk snorts. “You want the honest truth? You looked  _hot_  in that file photo, Bones.”   
  
They fall silent for a little while, and the quiet between them is thick with all the shit they can’t say, the stuff that’s angry and incomprehensible and needy and strange.   
  
“Are we taking you home after this, Bones? I’ve really gotta know,” sighs Kirk. He sounds resigned, as if he’s already decided what the outcome must be.   
  
McCoy wants to say,  _I don’t have a home anymore_. He wants to say,  _yes, God, I miss natural light and non-synthesized meals and actual fucking booze that isn’t distilled in a disused Jeffries Tube by a mentally unstable Scotsman_. But he can’t go back. He feels like he’s aged years in just a few weeks, and that before this, he hadn’t actually been living any life worth a damn. There’s nowhere else to go but where he already is, and then beyond.  
  
“Jim,” says McCoy, reaching out to squeeze Kirk’s hand and opening his eyes. “Jim, I want to stay.”


End file.
